Iron By Blood
by thisisntcalista
Summary: Her world was made up of metal and dirt. Miles underneath the poisoned ground her cries shook it. The ghost of the wasteland, the dead girl. Stories say if you lay you ear against the earth you may even hear her scream. The echo of the lost soul. The Saint among men. Savior. If you seek redemption, you seek her. In a world that had died, who keeps the living moving on? Max/OC


**Hey! This is my first story so please be nice. I rewatched Mad Max : Fury Road a couple of days ago and the characters and the world would not leave my head so here we are! Please review and tell me what you think! I'm always looking for new things to do with my writing and tips and tricks. so please help me! Also slow burn so watch out... Song is American Oxygen by Rihanna (I know Mad Max isn't in America...)**

* * *

On the other side of the ocean

you can be anything at all

in America, America

I say, can't see

just close your eyes and breathe

* * *

 _Open your eyes. Look. Look._ The girl blinked against the shadows. The damp corridors were barren, empty expect for her. Her feet slapping against the wet stone as she stumbled along the sleek wall. The shackles around her ankles scrapping against stone as they slowed her down. The voice was whispering in her ear again as it has for so many years. Blindly trusting it, she peered around. The way in front of her and behind her stretched on for what seemed endlessly. She could not remember how long has it been since she escaped. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest. It could have drowned at the voice hissing in her head.

 _Look. Look, foolish._

The girl titled her head to look above her, swallowing the sob in her throat. It was almost invisible in the dark. The hole in the ceiling and the rusted metal pegs in the wall. a ring of light at the end of it. A way out. A way to life. With clumsy limbs she began her climb. Her hands and feet clinging to the rusted pieces as her body pressed close against the wet wall. With every reach her arms ached, and her feet dragged with the weight of the iron chains. Blood leaked from her legs as she felt the cold cuffs bite into the sensitive skin, blisters formed on her palms, and more than once she lost her footing. The tears on her face leaving it sticky as her body welcomed the needed pain. She could not make it through with out it. She could not live without the pain that was the price of her freedom. She was so close, so so close.

 _Faster. Faster. Remember._

She was thought to be born in the darkness. That her whole life began in the hole they threw her inside of and it would end the same way.

But she remembers.

She remembers the sun and the dying land above. The dry heat that seemed to bleach bones and wither skins. She can see the figure of the woman and how her halo was the sun. The soft scent of her filled her nose nostalgically, lessening the weight on her chest. She remembers. She remembers. And she cries and cries. She will not die here, not now and not ever. She is so close, she could feel the heat from the outside just underneath the iron hatch. The dirty smell of the metal too familiar to her as she gritted her teeth and pushed against it. Her hands pounding against it. Dust fell from it and it creaked bit by bit. Tears still streaming down her face. Their words in her ears. Too precious, too fragile, too little for the world above.

That's what they told her.

That's how they kept her in the dark for years. For her long twenty four years. It was for her, it was all for her, for the girl's own safety and their own peace of mind.

She is so close, the sand already coating her tongue. She hears them below her. The panic and the whirl of humans scrambling. Scrambling to find her, the savior, the saint. Without her they are lost and hopeless. But did they not know they were already? They were no better than the gods that had cursed the wastelands. The gods may have set the earth on fire but it was man who killed the world.

And she would not be apart of it's murder any longer.

 _Hurry. Quick._

The hatch finally opened.

And the light bled into her and she was alive.

She was alive and running and running. And the world shook in the echoes of what she had done.

* * *

Max remembers. He remembers when he shouldn't. The ones he failed, the ones he let die. They could be harsh and resentful towards him.

Other times they were soft and caring. Always giving him warnings of the dangers to come.

Those were the worst times.

It was late in the day, the sun lowering itself closer to the horizon. Dusk. Max banged on the side of the rig, sand and dirt loosening itself from the machine's crooks and cracks. He knew the woman planned on driving through the night to keep heading west until they reached the Citadel. The tank emptied of water and produce for the Bullet Farm. It had a been risky trade, too many heated words and one too many guns pointed in their faces. But they have managed to walk away with enough ammunition for a good while. He glanced behind him at the two girls giggling to each other over a motor bike. The young one looking up at the dazed one through her eyelashes. The dazed rubbing her hands over her stomach, guns hanging off both their shoulders, they stopped wearing the white clothes of the wives as soon they could. Those girls, the four he helped, the four he didn't fail. And the one he did. He remembers the slip of blood as she tumbled into the tires of a mad man. Watched she went under and he had not stopped because stopping meant death for them all and it gave him more of a reason to keep them alive.

 _Max? Max? Where are you?_ He squeezed his eyes shut, they were always flickering. There in the sands as if they knew their blood had been spilled in it. That he had no done anything to stop it. He shook his head, loose sand and dust flying off him. The girl had joined into the crowd of souls clinging to him. Her scarred face and protruding stomach lingering now. One of her hands resting on it as the other held the child's hand that whispers to him.

 _We are not things._ Is all she tells him. It's all he needs to know.

He still didn't know why he came back. Why he offered his help to that woman. She would have managed just fine on her own, their previous journey providing enough evidence of that. And those girls- those girls didn't need anything but themselves now. The dazed one still calls him a smeg.

"We drive through the night." The two vanished as quickly as they had come at the sound of the voice. The woman appeared beside him, adjusting the straps on her arm. Oil still smeared across her eyes and forehead. She was every bit of a solider as she was before, the only difference was she promoted herself. He looked away from her green eyes as she watched him. He wondered if she could see them. The innocent lost in the sand and fire. Their blood staining underneath her eyelids that even looking into a darkness she saw them. He wondered if she ever felt mad, like him.

"There. There's something against the horizon." The dazed one stood up straighter, her arm extending and pointing south of them. The tiny one creeping closer to her, as close as she could get with a bike between the two. The woman tore her eyes away from him and at where the girl was pointing. Sure enough, there miles out was a black dot against the red sky. Max grunted his disapproval like he could see the woman's plan already forming in her mind. She looked over her shoulder at him, shrugging slightly. Her face still the same stoic state it always was.

"Could be hope." The pale war boy flickered somewhere to his right. He clicked his tongue.

"Could be bait."

"Out here everything's bait." And with that she left him to stare at the black figure against the dying sun.


End file.
